


Cotyledon

by Owlship



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Bittersweet, Canonical Character Death, Childbirth, F/M, Gen, Healing, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Post-Canon, Pregnancy, but mostly a happy ending, one line hinting at furiosa/max because i am TRASH
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-10 07:46:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14732858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/pseuds/Owlship
Summary: This is how Capable wants to remember Nux: his smile, the scars on his lips as he kissed her, how his eyes had been wide and full of awe when she took him inside of herself, the way he whispered that she gave him hope.She wants to remember him by what was created between them, not by the hole he left behind.





	Cotyledon

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [on tumblr](http://v8roadworrier.tumblr.com/post/155543829216/what-if-capable-shared-a-night-with-nux-before)!
> 
> Warning for a non-graphic stillbirth ( _not_ Capable's), and references to past miscarriages.

This is how Capable wants to remember Nux: his smile, the scars on his lips as he kissed her, how his eyes had been wide and full of awe when she took him inside of herself, the way he whispered that she gave him hope. He was so careful, so hesitant as he made sure it was what she wanted. He called her things like 'chrome' and she had liked the way it sounded, liked the idea of being something enduring.

She Witnessed his terrible sacrifice, and she clutched his memory to her heart like the Vuvalini had shown her, but that's how she prefers to remember him: when he was hers under the wide starry sky, when they were both free for the first time.

 

When they're back at the Citadel Capable doesn’t notice at first that she skips a period. Once this would have been of supreme importance, but it hardly crosses her mind with all the other things that need dealing with. Furiosa at death's door with a blood fever, the War Pups unsure if they made the right choice to let them up, hundreds of mouths to feed clamoring for things to happen all at once- there are so many people who all need their attention, so many problems to solve.

 

During the second month things are less intense, and it only comes to mind because Toast is complaining about hers starting, the way she always complains. And Capable thinks 'but I usually start before her'. Except perhaps it isn't so unusual to fall out of sync. At first they had slept in the Vault like they used, piled together to keep the dark and the memories at bay because there was no other place to go- and now they have their own rooms, thick metal doors lining a hallway that Furiosa had told them was where Imperators slept, a gleam of satisfaction in her eye.

The entire second month passes without any blood and she nervously goes to the Vuvalini who seems to know healing.

"Pregnant," the Vuvalini declares after an exam that is almost entirely unlike anything the Organic Mechanic had foisted on them. "It's early enough that if you want to take care of it..."

Capable shakes her head and holds onto her stomach, though it's still as flat as it ever was. "I'm keeping it," she says firmly.

The Vuvalini nods and asks if there's anything else she needs.

 

Cheedo and Dag took a room together, and Capable and Toast had eyed each other up, unsure if the bonds of their cage were enough to overcome the desire for space. In the end they chose to stay separate. If it were Angharad she would share in a heartbeat, but Angharad- she cuts the thought off before it can get any further.

Capable asks them all to sleep in her room that night, even extends the invitation to Furiosa, though she isn't at all surprised when the offer is declined. The bed is far too small for them all but they crowd onto it together anyway, overlapping limbs and hair tangling together. She tells them, her sisters in chains, whispers it into the night air and instead of the dread the words would have conjured only a few weeks ago, she feels almost as if she could float away.

 

After three months she's starting to round out in the middle, just a little at first but more and more each day it seems. Capable likes resting her hand against the bump under her skin, likes imagining what features it'll have. Nux's eyes surely, but maybe her nose. 

Dag keeps her stomach covered in layers, doesn't speak about it at all if she can help it. Capable understands but it saddens her deeply to see Dag's pain, to know that her own happier condition isn't helping.

 

The wild man- Max, she has to remember that his name is Max, that he gave his name to them (to Furiosa) during the long journey home- arrives in a cloud of dust and sad tired eyes. He presses his forehead to Furiosa's and breathes deeply, and Capable recognizes the look between them. It isn't how Dag and Cheedo look at one another, and it wasn't how she and Nux looked at each other, but she recognizes it all the same.

Barely any time later his eyes land on her growing belly, and Dag's, and then he's gone again.

 

"I want to learn to be a blackthumb," Capable says to Furiosa one day.

Furiosa tilts her head to the side like she can't imagine why she's being told this. "So learn."

That day Capable follows her down to the garages where there are boys still painted up enough to make her eyes catch for a split-second, Nux's image everywhere she looks. But none of them are Nux, though she recognizes in them the same curious blend of innocence and ruthlessness.

She expects to be handed off, or for Furiosa to turn her back and have her find her own way, but instead Capable is handed a wrench and told to start loosening the bolts that are pointed out to her.

She likes that about Furiosa, likes that she shows herself through actions instead of words. It's soothing in a way not to have to speak to be understood.

 

Dag loses her baby. It's born early and it's born wrong, and she spits on the corpse as it's carted away.

And then she buries her face into the curve of Cheedo's neck and begins sobbing, and Capable takes one of her hands and squeezes it as hard as she can to let Dag know that she's there. She waves to Toast hovering at the edges until their fourth sister is folded in, and they mourn and celebrate as one.

It makes her all the more aware of her precarious position. She wants her baby, wants it with every fiber of her being- but she's lost two already (three, if she counts the one that was so early even the Organic gave her a pass), and Joe's seed was old and sickly but Nux was sick, too.

She'd kissed his lumps herself, held him through the shakes that rattled his body as his skin burned up late at night, felt his breathing go harsh and strangled when he exerted himself too much. She rubs over the swell where their child is growing and remembers Dag's praying, before the last of it happened.

'Please,' Capable thinks with her eyes pressed tight, 'Please let it be alright.'

 

She grows larger, and larger. The baby inside of her kicks and tumbles with such vigor that she can't help but laugh whenever she feels it. It's so _alive_ , and she pictures it growing up with messy red hair and innocent blue eyes; the back of her throat prickles with tears that don't fall.

 

"I think I should stop coming to the workshop," Capable says when she's at the end of her eighth month, fingers greasy and black from the engineblock she's been trying to unravel.

Furiosa looks at her steadily.

"The fumes have to be bad, right?" she says. She doesn't really mean to but she elaborates, "I don't want to lose them, too."

"It's the same shit in the air down here as it is up there," Furiosa says bluntly. But she shrugs, and her eyes don't judge. "Your choice."

Capable stays the day, and the next, and then discovers that she is so tired and aching that she can't drag herself down anyway.

After a week Furiosa hands her a worn and faded mechanic’s manual to study as if it isn't one of the most precious things left in the world and only says, "Don't dog-ear the pages."

 

The last time Joe had her was two weeks before they escaped. She knows, _knows_ that her child is Nux's- but still the doubt lingers anyway. When the date if it had been _his_ arrives she holds her breath and closes her eyes up tight, praying silently.

'Please, please...'

A week passes, and she doesn't feel so much as a single practice contraction.

A second, and she breathes out. It's Nux's, it is, it is it _is_.

 

Dag had wanted them with her once her pains had started, had wanted to clutch and push and scream with the sisters who had made her cage even somewhat better than throwing herself out the window.

Capable wants to be alone. Would be entirely alone except the Vuvalini had patted her hand and kindly said that it would be a very bad idea.

She pushes and screams and bleeds without anyone else's help, and when it's over she has a baby, a beautiful little baby with wisps of red hair and wide blue eyes, so perfect she can't even wrap her mind around it.

"You have his nose, too," Capable tells the baby nonsensically, and then cries because her heart is overflowing and she doesn't know any other way to take away the pressure of it.

 

As her baby grows she finds that they got Nux's tender heart and wide-eyed wonder, but- and she'd prayed over this, too- not his lumps or his fevers.


End file.
